It was immortalised both on record and on a film that played in US theatres for a week in 1964 as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne.

Laurence Sterne ( 24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768 ) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman.

Laurence Sterne was born 24 November 1713 in Clonmel, County Tipperary.

His father, Roger Sterne, was an Ensign in a British regiment recently returned from Dunkirk.

Roger's regiment was disbanded on the day of Sterne ’ s birth, and within six months the family had returned to Yorkshire in northern England.

The first decade of Sterne ’ s life was spent moving from place to place as his father was reassigned throughout Ireland.

In 1724, his father took Sterne to Roger's wealthy brother, Richard, so that Sterne could attend Hipperholme Grammar School near Halifax ; Sterne never saw his father again as Roger was ordered to Jamaica where he died of a fever in 1731.

Sterne seems to have been destined to become a clergyman, and was ordained as a deacon in March 1737 and as a priest in August, 1738.

Shortly thereafter Sterne was awarded the vicarship living of Sutton-on-the-Forest in Yorkshire ( 1713 – 1768 ).

Sterne ’ s life at this time was closely tied with his uncle, Dr. Jaques Sterne, the Archdeacon of Cleveland and Precentor of York Minster.

Sterne ’ s uncle was an ardent Whig, and urged Sterne to begin a career of political journalism which resulted in some scandal for Sterne and, eventually, a terminal falling-out between the two men.

Jaques Sterne was a powerful clergyman but a mean-tempered man and a rabid politician.

It was while living in the countryside, having failed in his attempts to supplement his income as a farmer and struggling with tuberculosis, that Sterne began work on his most famous novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the first volumes of which were published in 1759.

Sterne was at work on his celebrated comic novel during the year that his mother died, his wife was seriously ill, and he was ill himself with consumption.

Sterne continued his comic novel, but every sentence, he said, was “ written under the greatest heaviness of heart .” In this mood, he softened the satire and recounted details of Tristram's opinions, eccentric family and ill-fated childhood with a sympathetic humour, sometimes hilarious, sometimes sweetly melancholic — a comedy skirting tragedy.

Sterne was lucky to attach himself to a diplomatic party bound for Turin, as England and France were still adversaries in the Seven Years ' War.

Capp has been compared, at various times, to Mark Twain, Dostoevski, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne and Rabelais.

Subsequently Sterne did duty both there and at Sutton.

Sterne lived in Sutton for twenty years, during which time he kept up an intimacy which had begun at Cambridge with John Hall-Stevenson, a witty and accomplished bon vivant, owner of Skelton Hall in the Cleveland district of Yorkshire.

Thus, Sterne lost his chances for clerical advancement but discovered his real talents ; until the completion of this first work, " he hardly knew that he could write at all, much less with humour so as to make his reader laugh ".

Aspects of this trip to France were incorporated into Sterne ’ s second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, which was published at the beginning of 1768.

* Laurence Sterne at the Google Books Search

* Sterne at The Internet Archive Text Search

* Laurence Sterne at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Her subjects included several ultimately famous personages, and her subjects provided a description of what she observed in her Saturday salons at 27 Rue de Fleurus: " Ada " ( Alice B. Toklas ), " Two Women " ( The Cone Sisters, Claribel Cone and Etta Cone ), Miss Furr and Miss Skeene ( Ethel Mars and Maud Hunt Squire ), " Men " ( Hutchins Hapgood, Peter David Edstrom, Maurice Sterne ), " Matisse " ( 1909, Henri Matisse ), " Picasso " ( 1909, Pablo Picasso ), " Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia " ( 1911, Mabel Dodge Luhan ), and " Guillaume Apollinaire " ( 1913 ).

He won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his part as Mischa Bjelkin in Helmut Käutner's Himmel ohne Sterne.

" Capp has been compared, at various times, to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Sterne, and Rabelais.

Around that year, Janco took commissions as an art teacher at his studio in Bucharest — in the words of his pupil, the future painter-photographer Hedda Sterne, these were unimpressive: " We were given easels, etc.

In 1908 he travelled to Rome with Field and there studied with Maurice Sterne as well as with wood carver Giuseppe Doratori at the British Academy.

The coalition was led at times both by Charterites ( Bobbie L. Sterne and Charles Phelps Taft II ) and by Democrats ( Tom Luken and Jerry Springer ).

In the mid 18th century, the authors Laurence Sterne and John Hall-Stevenson enjoyed racing chariots on the sands at Saltburn.

The villagers ' cottages are on the slope, and at the top is St Michael's church, to which Sterne was appointed vicar in 1760.

The stone tablet above its doorway states that Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey at Shandy Hall.

The northern surplus platform area at Hauptbahnhof Nord is currently used for the art installation Sterne by Raimund Kummer and Stefan Huber.

Without a passport at a time when England is at war with France ( Sterne traveled to Paris in January 1762, before the Seven Years ' War ended ), he risks imprisonment in the Bastille.

* Laurence Sterne enters Jesus College, Cambridge.

His great-grandson Laurence Sterne attended Jesus College, Cambridge, and would peak literary fame in the 1760s as author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

* Aktinometrie der Sterne der B. D. bis zur Größe 7. 5 in der Zone 0 ° bis + 20 ° Deklination.

* 1910 – Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter ( d. 2011 )

Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with Jacques le fataliste et son maître ( Jacques the Fatalist and his Master ), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding novels and their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about free will.

Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption.

During this period Sterne never lived in one place for more than a year.

His great-grandfather Richard Sterne had been the Master of the college as well as the Archbishop of York.

Sterne graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in January 1737 ; and returned in the summer of 1740 to be awarded his Master of Arts degree.

Sterne married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741.